I'm just wondering where they found 4 people to pay $2500 each, and another 8 people to pay $1000 each...

Without those, the math would be: $34527/282 = 122.44 average contribution, not nearly enough for a successful funding...
Wouldn't really surprise me if some of those 12 were a sponsor nudging this cheap marketing campaign to success,
they barely made it to the goal as it is. :/

As someone obviously didn't like him:
If he actually had robbed a bank or done any of the other things in the list, you could almost be certain that they would add a whole bunch of bogus charges against him to make sure he would get potentially locked up for life anyway...

US "justice" is scary, and I don't think I'll ever dare set my foot on US soil now. It seems more like a legal minefield from here.

With the first two books already in the public domain, you can't help but think "this is going to happen anyway".
It certainly doesn't help that the entire digital trilogy is a 20$ pledge, while you can buy the first two books on their website for 3$ & 5$, and pledge for the third book for another 5$ (combined 13$).